A Universal Application Storage System Based on Smart Card

Abstract

Nowadays, electronic commerce (e-commerce) has brought facilitation to people’s daily lives. Smart-card-based systems are widely used as an implementation, where smart cards act as a secure carrier for small-sized data. However, most of these systems are developed and managed by each service provider individually and repeatedly, which causes both unnecessary work and difficulties in future maintenance. Besides, advantages of smart card technology are not full-fledged for the lack of enough consideration in flexibility and security. To propose a solution, this article presents a Universal Application Storage System, including card side, terminal side, and back-end system. The card side provides a universal and secured infrastructure for data storage, where data are organized and stored in a card file system with several security mechanisms. In the terminal side, a framework for accessing various forms of secure element is presented to simplify the procedures involved in manipulating smart cards. Through this framework, the back-end system is able to establish a direct connection to the card, and performs authorized operations by exchanging commands in a secure channel. The validity of the proposed system is verified at the end of this article, illustrated by an e-coupon system.